can anyone with experience suggest to me what they think is a more reliable printer, the ZBE Chromira vs. Oce Lightjet 430? I'm talkin' about working with the printer as an operator printing others photos, which one seems to need more repair. And with the photographers, what kind of differences are you seeing in the two?
I operate the Chromira right now, the 30 inch wide one....just too throw that out there.Originally Posted by New Hassel Man
I have owned ZBE products in the past, oriental cold head and zbe starlight, both were not reliable and service was non existant.
The ZBE Chromira tech in this area is nowhere as competent as Durst techs that are local or Durst USA.
New lightjets are no longer being made , therefore a 7 year mandate for parts which is I believe in their fourth year. If I was a lightjet tech or owner I would be switching.
I own a Durst Lambda 76 and am extremely happy with its parts and excellent service.
Regarding the look... Chromira LED and Lightjet Laser both run at around 320ppi .
Lambda laser runs at 200 and 400ppi.
I have seen side by side comparison of all three and consider them all good.
Lasers, especially the blue, on the lightjet are expensive to replace. They also don't last all that long. The Chromira uses LEDs, which should last longer and be cheaper if they do die. The Chromira is also much smaller, so less floor space is needed. The output from both is very good.
I've never run the larger lightjets, or a chromira so take my advice with a grain of salt. I have however used a Lightjet film recorder and have had issues with it. Support is discontinued. My ZBE starlight is still going fine: but, now Bob has me worried.
I used certain ZBE subcomponents on my own enlarger design because they had a
fairly unique way of designing efficient "brains" for these things. But right from the
start the Starlight had some serious problems with internal heat, which chewed up
not only dichroic filters rather quickly, but inevitably affected what the critter was
thinking too. The big Durst mural enlargers had similar issues, and were brutal on
utility bills. That why I started from scratch with an inependent colorhead design.
As far as the Chromira is concerned, why not contact Jim Browning directly at
Digital Mask? He was not only one of the key engineers involved in designing it, but
also routinely uses one commercially.
Larry
I may have gotten two really bad apples when I purchased, both the oriental and starlight. Neither head lasted more than 1year, ZBE was impossible to deal with and I just threw them both in the garbage.
If yours is still working, hopefully you will never have a problem.
A friend of mine had a ZBE enlarger. It broke, he sent it to a ZBE repair place, he hasn't seen it since. That was about 5 - 6 years ago. The enlarger was about 5 - 10 years old at the time it went down.
Brian Ellis
Before you criticize someone, walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you do criticize them you'll be
a mile away and you'll have their shoes.
During the warranty period they were available at the ready for phone call solutions, (in a year, we probably had two visits from techs, the rest we did ourselves) but it seemed that more often than not it was guess work to actually fix the problems that had occured on the machine. What I've also noticed is that, if I'm not routinely tightening and cleaning this thing (which I suppose is necessary) then it'll completely fall apart, meaning production slows and a ton of paper gets wasted figuring out the problem.
Beautiful prints, just one finicky ass machine!!!
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